Distinctly Montana Magazine

D I S T I N C T LY M O N TA N A s FA L L 2 0 1 5 72 72 W I L D W ES T W O R DS W I L D W ES T W O R DS with CHRYSTI THE WORDSMITH Nowadays, a scalawag is little more than a rascal or scamp. is seemingly innocuous word, however, once had some very sharp teeth. In the post-Civil War South, a scalawag was a local who supported reconstructionary measures, hoping to profit from cooperating with the Republican administration in the North. In some documents from the era, scalawags were compared to "foul lepers" and deemed "low persons of the baser sort." Considered more vile than Northern carpetbag- gers, Southern scalawags were compared to traitors. But the North had its scalawags too, and they showed up decades before their Dixieland counterparts. e Dictionary of Americanisms, published in 1848, referred to scalawag as an "epithet in Western New York for a mean fellow, a scapegrace." In Trade Union slang, a scalawag was a lazy, recalcitrant man. Yet another definition of the word, and probably its original sense, is "a lean, scrawny, undersized horse." is leads some etymologists to speculate that scalawag derives from the isle of Scalloway in Scotland's Shetland Islands, known for its populations of small ponies, which are of little value as work animals. From this, scalawag may have evolved to mean "morally stunted person, one who will not work." But this is only an educated guess offered by word-watchers. Every dictionary admits that the origin of the word scalawag is either uncertain or unknown. A gadabout is a social sampler, roving from place to place seeking companionship, gossip or amusement. Poet and novelist Sir Walter Scott wrote in 1817 of "the frivolous…gad-about manner of…our modern belles." In 1851, British writer Sir Alfred Helps scoffed about "Foolish gad-about, dining, dancing people." Restless gadabouts are etymologically driven by stinging flies; specifically the gadfly, the European ana- logue of the North American horsefly or deerfly. ese three species are members of the Tabanidae family of biting flies — swarming, stinging insects that drive livestock and wild herds mad, and can deliver painful punctures to human flesh as well. e European gadfly derives its name from gad, an Old Norse word meaning "sharp spike of metal or wood." e word goad, referring to a pointed rod for driving cattle, is a close relative. Etymologically, when the gadfly bites, it's as if a gad, or a spike, is piercing the skin. Gadabouts, then, in their search for amusements, perambulate hither and thither like animals driven to distraction by the sting of the gadfly. SCALAWAG DEPARTMENT HERITAGE HERITAGE HERITAGE GADABOUT

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